We all go a little mad sometimes.

Fear of missing out.

I never have any plans for the weekend. Whenever someone asks me what my plans are for the weekend or what I did over the weekend, my answer is the same: nothing much. For as far back as I can remember, I have always enjoyed my solitude. Weekends are for me to stay in and relax completely. I cannot be bothered to leave my room.

Despite this I have a sizable fear of missing out; FOMO as it is called. I always imagine that others are having fun without me, which they most likely are. I so badly want to stay home and do nothing but at the same time, I sometimes feel as though I am wasting away my youth.

I think deep down in my heart, I am a social person. I look back at the child I was and I wonder what happened. Back then I would organise all the children on my street; I formed a club and we would have meetings. One random morning, I decided to throw a party and a few hours later the party was underway for no reason at all. I miss that person. I wonder what happened to her. She is still in here somewhere, I feel her stirring all the time. I seem to have buried her under layers of God knows what and only God knows why.

I have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, with her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

I am starting to be bored by my solitude, which occasionally turns into its ugly twin-loneliness. When the weekend approaches, I am a little sad that I have no plans. Yet whenever I do make plans, I am filled with a strange nervousness. Once the plan is actually underway I feel fine, but the hours before I set off are mildly nerve-wracking. I assume it is a watered down version of what an agoraphobic must feel. It is almost as if I am afraid to have a good time. I have become accustomed to the initial nervousness and I know that I just have to get through it and have a good time. Still sometimes I am relieved when plans fall through and I get to do nothing instead.

Once I am done with the outing, I am happy to be back home having fulfilled the need to leave the house and do something. At least now I have an answer if I am asked what I did over the weekend. This one outing usually satiates the desire to go out for a few weeks; I have left the house, that should hold me over a little bit.

Yet I wonder what others are up to, what fun things are they doing?

The worst case of FOMO comes on my birthday. Even if I do nothing and stay in the whole year, I like to create beautiful memories on my birthday. I spent weeks-months even trying to figure out what to do on my birthday. Oh how I panicked that I would end up staying in bed all day. 4am on my birthday I was still up trying to figure out the plans, it did not help that it was on a weekday and everyone was at work. I did eventually manage to have an okay time by myself but it could have been much better.

I know deep down the social child I was is still there. I love planning things; I love creating an itinerary of events and things to do. It is rare that I go through with them but still the process is exciting.

In my dream life, I am out of the house regularly-not clubbing-but just being enriched by the world and all the beauty life has to offer.

I am over being alone.

Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.

I need to leave my room more often. This is really the long and short of it all. Nothing interesting is going to happen in my room. I need to remind myself constantly to just get out and see what outside has to offer. I literally stay in all weekend, only leaving to stock up on food and then I worry I am missing out on life.

I have resolved to do something interesting every weekend, at least one day of the weekend. I made a similar resolution last year-I was determined to leave my room at least once a day. I even wrote down a list of places to go but then couldn’t be arsed to go to some of them alone.

Life is meant to be lived and so far, I am failing miserably at that. I do not want to be bereft of memories. I want to look back at my life and marvel at how rich it was.

Both quotes are from Sylvia Plath, who seems to have a quote for every mood I’m in.